ENGL 4275/WRDS 4011: “Rhetoric of Technology” » January 23rd: Technology and Democracy

January 23rd: Technology and Democracy

Announcements

Rhetoric of Technology Introduction

Today we’ll go over the following (but not necessarily in this order):

Quick Recap from (last) Tuesday

  • Technique, Technology
  • Non-instinctual Techniques/Technologies
  • Expressive Behaviors
    • Non-human species (mating)
    • Humans (dating/mating)
  • Artificiality/Sociality
  • Posthumanism

While we won’t argue that most artifacts are technologies (from hammers to satellites), it’s more difficult to consider most techniques or systems (from throwing to political organization) as technologies. If we consider ourselves from a posthuman perspective, one where homo sapiens fully embraced artificiality, we might be uncomfortable asking “are we just tools?”

Locating American Values

We didn’t get to this on Tuesday, so let’s get back to our theoretical exploration of locating a society’s values. Because this course is a theoretical exploration of how we can locate a society’s values by “reading” its technologies, we ought to think about what those values are. This page asks you to think about American values. The goal of this next exercise is to identify values that we might be able to “read” in technologies from American society.

Science and Knowledge Creation, a Kuhnian Perspective

Before we go on to Winner, let’s head back to Kuhn and discuss Scientific paradigms and revolutions. There is a separate field called the Rhetoric of Science, but we’re going to focus on Kuhn’s discussion of knowledge creation (and assumptions) in science.

Langdon Winner

Overall, Winner discusses the political nature of technologies; specifically, he’s trying to get us to see beyond the functional uses of technologies–their tool-related attributes–and to “read” technologies critically. A critical awareness of technology means one looks at how technologies come to be in relation to social forces that help construct those technologies. Winner provides many examples in these two readings, and we’ll look at them more closely.

A note on his introduction to the chapter

Winner begins by pointing out that we’re an advanced technological society, but we don’t pay close enough attention to the effects of technology. His point in stating, “It is reasonable to suppose that a society thoroughly committed to making artificial realities would have given a great deal of thought to the nature of that commitment” (p. 3), is to set up that we haven’t thought much about our commitment to technological creation, specifically technologies that provide us artificial realities. That lack of attention (even 35 years after he brought this up) is why this class exists. Two other points Winner makes related to this topic are the following:

  • “Why has a culture so firmly based upon countless sophisticated instruments, techniques, and systems remained so steadfast in its reluctance to examine its own foundations” (p. 5).
  • “What the others do care about, however, are tools and uses” (p. 5).
    • Most of us–including the shortsightedness of the field of Technical Communication–just think about using these tools for a purpose.
    • Additionally, their presence is invisible to us. Electricity is our most used technology. Try to consider a time when you aren’t using it…

Chapter 1: “Technologies as Forms of Life”

  • “Synthetic conditions…ha[ve] become more ‘real’ than the actual experience” (p. 3).
  • Philosophy of technology: “to examine critically the nature and significance of artificial aids to human activity” (p. 4).
  • Technological somnambulism: the ideology that “the only reliable sources for improving the human condition stem from new machines, techniques, and chemicals” (p. 5).
  • Ways to view technological development:
    • Technological determinism:
      • a. “the idea that technological innovation is the basic cause of changes in society and that human beings have little choice other than to sit back and watch this ineluctable process unfold” (pp. 9-10).
      • b. “the idea that technology develops as the sole result of an internal dynamic and then, unmediated by any other influence, molds society to fit its pattern” (p. 21).
    • Social determination (construction) of technology:
      • a. the idea that we can understand technology’s presence by “look[ing] behind technical devices to see the social circumstances of their development, deployment, and use” (p. 20-21).
      • b. the idea that technology represents–is a product of–the society from which it comes.
  • Once technologies become stabilized–part of the built environment–they become “forms of life in the most powerful sense: life would scarcely be thinkable without them”; technologies “become ‘second nature'” (p. 11).
  • “As technologies become woven into the texture of everyday existence…[they] shed their tool-like qualities to become part of our very humanity” (p. 12).
  • Technology–an adventure in babysitting (pp. 12-13).
  • Marx on Technology: “individuals are actively involved in the daily creation and recreation, production and reproduction of the world in which they live” (p. 15)
  • “Through technological creation and many other ways as well, we make a world for each other to live in” (p. 18)

Winner is talking about not only engineers or inventors, but humans engaging in social conduct–we create ideologies that “govern”–implicitly or explicitly–our activities.

Online, a Historical Perspective

Fifteen-twenty years ago, webpages were the thing students did to demonstrate they had mastery of communication in digital environments. Webpages showcased student work, allowing reflection on our course topics. Some students were experts, and some were new to web technologies. Eventually, I asked students to do either a traditional webpage or use a social media platform for the following discussions:

  • Reading Reflections: text, images, video, etc.
  • Locating American Values
  • Democratizing/Oppressing Technologies

I didn’t expect students to be a web editors, but I wanted the assignment to reinforce our discussions about technology and to have a place where they could showcase ideas about technology. How might X (Twitter), Instagram, or Facebook be beneficial here?

Keep up With the Reading

Next class (1/25), we’ll continue with Winner by discussing “Do Artifacts have Politics?” Also, I’ve set aside time for writing discussions and workshops this semester. We will also use those days to catch up on material we might not have covered. Next week (1/29), Marc Bess from Atkins Library is supposed to come discuss research stuff, so I’m trying to figure out how to work that into a discussion on Technology and Yourself, a reflective essay (due: 2/02), but research is more important for your Social Construction of Technology Essay (due 3/14).